Days in AR History - Starting with F

Senator John McClellan was born on a farm near Sheridan (Grant County). McClellan served longer in the U.S. Senate than any other Arkansan and was one of its most powerful members. Today, the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System serves as a notable example of the senator’s belief that large federal projects would boost Arkansas’s prosperity.

Marjorie Florence Lawrence, an Australian native who became a star soprano before she was stricken with polio, made her debut at the Paris Opera House as a mezzo soprano in Wagner’s Lohengrin, after having debuted the previous season in Monte Carlo. Lawrence later had a home in Hot Springs (Garland County) and greatly enhanced appreciation for classical music through the summer coaching sessions she conducted from her home.

Boxer Sonny Liston, son of Arkansas sharecroppers, lost the Heavyweight Championship to Cassius Clay (soon to be Muhammad Ali) when he refused to answer the bell for the seventh round. Liston was a noted boxer who briefly reigned as Heavyweight Champion after a first-round knockout against Floyd Patterson. However, his career was marred by criminal activity and, later, accusations of mob connections and throwing fights.

Less than a year after winning the Heavyweight Championship, a heavily favored Sonny Liston (a native of St. Francis County) lost his title to upstart Cassius Clay (soon to be Muhammad Ali) when he refused to answer the bell for the seventh round, claiming a shoulder injury. The rematch on May 25, 1965, was even more controversial. Liston went down in the first round, felled by a punch few saw. It was scandal on top of scandal; Liston’s reputation—already tainted by prison time, allegations of mob connections, and charges of sexual assault—never recovered. He continued fighting until June 29, 1970, but he never got another title shot. His final record as a professional was fifty wins (thirty-nine by knockout) and four losses.

Jim Ferguson was born in Silver Hill (Searcy County). A philanthropist who made contributions to several hospitals and schools throughout the state, he is most known in Searcy County as the impetus behind the public library in Marshall (Searcy County), named the Jim G. Ferguson Searcy County Library.

The General Assembly adopted the state’s official flag: a red, white, and blue design submitted to the Daughters of the American Revolution’s design contest by Willie Kavanaugh Hocker of Wabbaseka (Jefferson County). Because the design committee had decreed that the flag ought to bear the state’s name, Hocker had assented and suggested that the three blue stars be rearranged, one above the name and two below. The design remained unchanged until 1923, when the General Assembly added a fourth star to the central diamond to represent Arkansas’s membership in the Confederate States of America.

“Preacher” Roe was born in Ash Flat (Sharp County). Roe played professional baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Brooklyn Dodgers. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Roe was one of the top pitchers in the game. Roe is known for his philanthropy, a trend that started early in his career. He was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1967 and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame in 1976.

Bernell “Fatman” Austin, who sold the first fried dill pickles in the summer of 1963, was born. From those first fried dill pickles—which cost fifteen cents for an order of fifteen hamburger slices—he evolved a secret recipe that is used today to make Fatman’s Original Fried Dill Pickles.

Outlaw country musician Johnny Cash, the famous “Man in Black,” was born in Kingsland (Cleveland County). His most well-known songs include “I Walk the Line,” “Fulsom Prison Blues,” and “A Boy Named Sue.” The recipient of numerous Grammy Awards, including the Living Legend and Lifetime Achievement Awards, Cash also starred in television shows and in movies and penned a best-selling autobiography, Man in Black, in 1975, with a new version titled Cash: The Autobiography in 1997. Two years after his 2003 death, a major motion picture documenting the first half of his life, Walk the Line, was released and met with both critical and commercial success.

A bill entitled “An Act to Prevent Betting in any Manner in This State on any Horse Race” was approved by the state government. This necessitated the closing of Oaklawn Park Racetrack in Hot Springs (Garland County) at the end of the 1907 season and for a decade after that. Even before the Civil War, the former pasture where Oaklawn Park Racetrack now stands was home to impromptu races between local farm boys riding their fastest ponies. Today, the track is Arkansas’s only thoroughbred horse-racing venue and the lone remaining gambling center in a city once known as much for its casinos as for its famous thermal baths.

Arkansas Post, the first permanent European colony in the Mississippi River Valley, was established as a state park in an effort to recognize the area’s historic significance. The site in Arkansas County near what is now Gillett was settled by French traders in 1686, and was the site of a Quapaw village known as Osotowy. The actual post was moved several times because of flooding. The move to mark the site and preserve knowledge of its significance was led by Fletcher Chenault, a columnist of the Arkansas Gazette.

Texas native James “Uncle Mac” MacKrell, who began his career in radio in Fayetteville (Washington County) after moving to Arkansas in 1929, died of a heart attack while interviewing a group of teenagers during his nightly radio show called Party Line on KVEE in Conway (Faulkner County). Known as “Uncle Mac” to his adolescent radio audience and as a radio evangelical to others, he is perhaps most remembered for his two campaigns for governor of Arkansas, in 1948 and in 1970.

Chelsea Victoria Clinton—daughter of former Arkansas governor and U.S. president Bill Clinton and former Arkansas and U.S. first lady and New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton—was born. The same year, Hillary Clinton became a partner at Little Rock’s prestigious Rose Law Firm.

Francis Irby Gwaltney, an author and professor, died. He is buried in Crestlawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Conway (Faulkner County). Gwaltney had operated a bookstore in Conway after having taught in several Arkansas schools and colleges, as well as, for a brief time, at Louisiana Tech. He published eight novels, the best known of which is The Day the Century Ended. During his service with the army in the Asiatic Pacific Theater in World War II, Gwaltney formed an enduring friendship with author Norman Mailer.

The yellow brick portion of the abandoned Majestic Hotel was destroyed by fire. The remainder of the hotel, in the process of being boarded up at the time of the fire, was condemned. For more than a century, the five-acre complex anchored the intersection of the main thoroughfares, Park and Central avenues, at the north end of Bathhouse Row in historic downtown Hot Springs. The Majestic continued to undergo renovations through the 1990s, but it was forced to close in 2006. It went through several sales and various owners who pledged to renovate the building for a number of uses, but the renovations never took place. The hotel was demolished in 2016.

J. B. Hunt was born to sharecroppers in rural Cleburne County. He left school after the seventh grade to go to work at his uncle’s sawmill and later worked picking cotton and selling lumber. With industriousness and innovation, he rose to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the state’s history. He founded one of America’s largest trucking firms, which became one of the largest employers in the state and is consistently listed among Forbes magazine’s list of America’s largest corporations.

The Atkins Pickle Company was purchased by a group headed by E. G. Watkins of Little Rock (Pulaski County) and his wife; Robert Switzer was hired as chemist. He created many of the products that were important for the company’s growth, developing pickled baby tomatoes, called “Tomolives,” and formulating the improved taste and crispness of fresh-pack sweet and dill pickles. Atkins Pickle Company was the major industry in the town of Atkins (Pope County) for more than fifty years, and its legacy survives in the annual Picklefest celebration that began in 1992. Since 2004, the building that housed the pickle plant has housed Atkins Prepared Foods, which processes chicken.

Hester Buck Robinson died at the Arkansas Baptist Hospital in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Robinson owned a significant amount of land in Prairie County. At one point in the 1940s, there were 149 families living and working on her farms. At the time of her death, she owned 15,075 acres of land.

The Arkansas legislature approved Act 277, designating the fiddle as the official musical instrument of the state of Arkansas. The designation, which originated as House Bill 749 sponsored by Representative Bob Watts of Harrison (Boone County), asserted that the instrument was “most commonly associated with the musical education and entertainment of the pioneer families of Arkansas and…continues as a dominant musical instrument in the culture…of the people of Arkansas.” Watts’s measure was supported in the chamber by Representative Napoleon Bonaparte “Nap” Murphy of Hamburg (Ashley County), who delivered a brief oration on the floor of the House on the history of the fiddle from medieval times to its modern form.

Governor Mike Huckabee signed Act 476 of 2001, which designated the Dutch oven as the official state historic cooking vessel. The Dutch oven, a cast iron vessel that has three supporting legs, was present in most homes by the time of statehood.

The obituary of Elias Nelson Conway appeared in the Arkansas Democrat. He had died the day before after falling headfirst into his fireplace. Conway—born into an extended kinship group known as “The Family,” which dominated the politics of early Arkansas—was elected the fifth governor of Arkansas (his brother James Sevier Conway had been Arkansas’s first governor). He served as governor longer than anyone until Orval Faubus, a century later. His eight years in office relatively prosperous for the growing state. The mounting tensions that led to the Civil War began to play out during Conway’s second term, and the voters ended the Family’s political domination in the election of 1860 when they rejected Conway’s choice for a successor.

Famed lawman Pat Garrett, the slayer of Billy the Kid, was killed under mysterious circumstances. Whether outlaw Jim Miller was the actual slayer or merely part of the murder conspiracy remains controversial. Miller was an Arkansas native but spent much of his life in Texas and Oklahoma, where he earned the reputation of a professional assassin, manipulating the court system to avoid prison. From his early years in Van Buren (Crawford County) to his death in Ada, Oklahoma, Miller proved to be a man to be feared.

Arkansas State Police raided two clubs in Hot Springs (Garland County), arresting seventeen people and seizing gambling equipment from the Southern Club and the Pine Supper Club. The need for traffic control on state highways had led to the creation of the first statewide law enforcement agency in 1929, but by the middle of the decade, the force was increasingly involved in responding to crimes that local authorities were unable or unwilling to handle.

The State Penitentiary Board banned the use of the strap as a form of corporal punishment at the Cummins and Tucker state prison farms. Throughout the twentieth century, politicians had called for reform of Arkansas’s prison system, but positive changes happened slowly. New governor Winthrop Rockefeller had vowed to improve Arkansas’s prisons, and several improvements were enacted during his term of office, including medical care for prisoners, educational programs, and guards hired from outside the prison replacing “trusties,” who were guards recruited from among the prisoners.

Belle Starr died after being shot in the back by an unknown killer. As a resident of Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), Starr came under the jurisdiction of Judge Isaac C. Parker in Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Her reputation as an outlaw, as well as the novelty of her being a woman and her violent, mysterious death, led to her being called “The Bandit Queen.”

The second Roman Catholic bishop of Little Rock, Edward Mary Fitzgerald, celebrated his fortieth anniversary as bishop in Hot Springs (Garland County), eighteen days before he died. While he was bishop in Arkansas, he was one of only two bishops in the world—and the only English-speaking one—to vote against papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council.

Tragedy stuck Henderson-Brown College in Arkadelphia (Clark County) early in the morning. A fire broke out in the main building and quickly engulfed the entire structure. Thanks to the efforts of the male students of both Henderson-Brown and Ouachita Baptist colleges, the entire library, several pianos, and countless personal effects were saved. The building itself was a total loss. Subsequently, the entire student body met under a pine grove near the remains of the building and discussed the next step in the future of the college. Out of nearly 300 enrolled, only seven students decided to leave. The decision of most of the students to stay and rebuild their school is known as the birth of the Reddie Spirit.

Movie producer, director, and screenwriter James Bridges was born in Paris (Logan County) in western Arkansas. Bridges was known for some of the biggest hit films of the 1970s and 1980s, such as The China Syndrome and Urban Cowboy. He also filmed one of his movies, 9/30/55, in Conway (Faulkner County). The movie was based on his own reaction to the death of film legend James Dean.

Football player Elijah Pitts was born to sharecropper parents on land near Mayflower (Faulkner County). Pitts played at Philander Smith College and went on to star for the Green Bay Packers in the first Super Bowl. He was one of the early black stars of the National Football League (NFL) from the segregated South and had a long career as a player and a professional coach.

Governor Powell Clayton signed a bill creating Grant County. Those behind the creation of the new county had been supporters of the Union during the war, so they named the new county after General Ulysses S. Grant and the county seat after General Philip H. Sheridan. Residents tried several times to change the names but failed. Grant County, located in central Arkansas, is best known for its timber industry. The county is saturated with logging operators who use modern techniques to harvest pine trees and hardwood saw logs. The logs are transported to the International Paper Company mill in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) and to sawmills in Leola (Grant County), Benton (Saline County), and nearby towns.

William Allan Oldfield was born in Franklin (Izard County). He was elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-first U.S. Congress and to the nine succeeding Congresses, serving from 1909 until his death in 1928. During that time, he served as a member of the House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means and was chosen as chair of the Democratic Congressional Committee, campaigning across the country for Democratic candidates and incumbents. He was reelected to the Seventy-first Congress, his tenth consecutive term, but he died before he could take office. His wife took his place in Congress, becoming the first woman in Arkansas elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

House Bill 128 was signed into law. The “Martineau Road Law” ushered in a new era of transportation in Arkansas, during which the state would assume the debts of former road improvement districts—which were $60 million in the red in the early part of the decade—issue bonds to begin road construction, increase gasoline and auto taxes, and charge tolls to finance new bridges. With this law, the state government took on highways as one of its biggest responsibilities.

Futha Cone Magie married Elizabeth Anne (Betty) Rice of Lonoke (Lonoke County). Magie and his wife later bought and published a number of newspapers in small Arkansas towns and won many journalism awards. They were known for working for the betterment of the community in which they worked. Together they were named Arkansas Journalists of the Year in 1991 by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s journalism department. In addition to a number of other honors, Magie was inducted into the Alumni Society Hall of Journalism at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville in 2005.

The last twenty-three Cuban refugees, who had fled Cuba in 1980 seeking political asylum and who had been housed at Fort Chaffee near Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and other places in the United States, left Fort Chaffee. More than 125,000 refugees had fled Cuba in 1980. Records show that, overall, 25,390 refugees from the boats escaping Cuba had been housed at Fort Chaffee. Few, if any, chose to settle in northwest Arkansas.

Belle Starr, the “Bandit Queen of the West,” was born Myra Maybelle Shirley near Carthage, Missouri. As a resident of Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, Belle Starr came under the jurisdiction of Judge Isaac C. Parker in Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Her reputation as an outlaw, the novelty of her being a female criminal, and her violent, mysterious death led to her being called the “Bandit Queen.”

Twelve members of the Sisters of Mercy order in Ireland arrived in Little Rock (Pulaski County) after Bishop Andrew Byrne went to Ireland in search of an order of sisters to promote Catholic education in Arkansas. The day is now known as Mount St. Mary Academy’s “Founders Day.” Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock is Arkansas’s oldest educational institution and the state’s only all-girl secondary school. Today, Mount St. Mary educates about 550 high school students.

Three men (wearing blackface, according to one source) robbed the Bank of Clarksville and, in the process, killed Sheriff John Powers. Exactly one year later, Fred Derham and George Underwood were hanged in Clarksville (Johnson County) for the crimes. The third robber, John Dunn, got away and was never charged. The hanging brought out one of the largest crowds Johnson County had ever seen.

The newly opened Parkin Archeological State Park held an open house attended by about 850 visitors. Parkin Archeological State Park in northeast Arkansas preserves and interprets a Mississippian-period Native American village that existed from approximately AD 1000 to 1550. European-made trade items from the era of Hernando de Soto’s expedition that were recovered at the park and written descriptions of the village support theories that the Spanish visited the Parkin Site in 1541. Since its beginnings, the park has operated under a partnership with the Arkansas Archeological Survey. A research station is located in the visitor center so visitors can watch research in progress and see firsthand the results of excavations and laboratory analysis.

An EF-4 tornado tore a 123-mile-long path through seven counties in north central Arkansas, killing twelve people and injuring at least 190. Approximately 880 homes and 100 businesses were destroyed. The storm set an Arkansas record for its length and made one of the longest verified tornado tracks in U.S. history. The towns of Clinton (Van Buren County) and Atkins (Pope County) suffered the most severe damage. A smaller tornado devastated Gassville (Baxter County).

J. W. Morris was born at Honey Hill (White County). Beginning in 1950, the Arkansas Medical Association (AMA) recognized Morris as the oldest practicing physician in Arkansas. In 1973, the AMA and “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” recognized him as the oldest full-time practicing physician in the United States.

Frank “Jelly” Nash was born in Birdseye, Indiana. His father, John “Pappy” Nash, started hotels in several southern towns, including Paragould (Greene County), Jonesboro (Craighead County), and Hobart, Oklahoma. Living in Paragould from 1893 to 1896, Nash then moved with his father to Jonesboro and, afterward, to Hobart, which he later treated as his hometown. Frank Nash has been called “the most successful bank robber in U.S. history,” but he is most noted for his violent death in what has become known as the Kansas City Massacre. Nash is thought to have participated in roughly 200 bank robberies and was often considered the “mastermind” of several groups of criminals.

Congress took the circuit court authority from the federal court at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and allowed the U.S. Supreme Court to begin reviewing all capital crimes. This had a profound effect on Judge Isaac Parker, known as the “hanging judge” of Arkansas. Soon, the Supreme Court began to reverse the capital crimes tried in Fort Smith, and two-thirds of the cases that were appealed were sent back to Fort Smith for a new trial.

Kathryne Bess Hail, an artist and teacher who was especially known for her still-life paintings of flowers, was born in Ozark (Franklin County). After she married Olin Herman Travis in November 1916, she and her husband helped establish the Dallas Art Institute, which was the first major art school in the South to offer instruction in a variety of fields. After the couple’s divorce in 1934, she moved to Beverly Hills, California, then resettled in Seattle, Washington, and worked in a number of western states. In 1957, she established the Kathryne Hail Travis Summer School of Painting in Ruidoso, New Mexico, where she lived from 1960 until her death in 1972. She is also known for the collection of quilts she acquired during her many trips to Arkansas.

Willie Kavanaugh Hocker—a schoolteacher, poet, and active member of civic groups such as the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Colonial Dames Society—died at her home in Wabbaseka (Jefferson County). She was also the designer of the Arkansas state flag, one of only two women in the United States who have had state flag designs adopted. A historical marker was placed by the Wabbaseka United Methodist Church in June 2005 to honor her for her life as a teacher, churchwoman, and designer of the Arkansas state flag.

State Representative John A. Riggs of Hot Springs (Garland County) introduced in the Arkansas House a women’s primary suffrage bill. The right of women to vote had been advocated since shortly after the Civil War with various efforts at organized influence over the years. With the Arkansas women’s suffrage movement growing in popularity, and with Governor Charles Brough‘s noting that he favored women’s enfranchisement and considered it an honor to sign the measure, a women’s suffrage bill finally was passed, making Arkansas the “first non-suffrage state in the Union” to permit women to vote in primary elections.

The Primary Suffrage Bill, HB 340, which enfranchised women to vote in primary elections, was introduced. It passed the House by a vote of 54–27, and on February 27, the Senate’s 17–15 “yea” vote gave full passage. HB 340 was a significant victory, making Arkansas the first non-suffrage state that allowed women to vote in Democratic primary elections. John Andrew Riggs was the author of the bill. Riggs was a pioneer, politician, early aviator, patent medicine business proprietor, and father of women’s suffrage in Arkansas.

The Arkansas State Normal School changed its name to Arkansas State Teachers College (ASTC); it eventually became the University of Central Arkansas (UCA). ASTC made significant progress under the leadership of President Torreyson, growing from twenty faculty members and 328 students in 1917 to fifty faculty members and 528 students in 1930. UCA has been one of Arkansas’s leading institutions of higher education for more than 100 years. Beginning as a normal school (teacher’s training institution) with approximately 100 students in 1908, UCA has become a comprehensive PhD-granting institution with 11,350 students in fall 2017.

Governor Bill Clinton signed into law the Arkansas General Assembly’s designation of the square dance as the official American folk dance of Arkansas. Act 93 resembled measures introduced across the nation by promoters of club square dancing after an attempt to have the dance awarded national symbol status failed in 1988. The bill posited a long history of “called” or “cued” dancing in North America and Arkansas, as well as the association of square dancing with family recreation. It defined square dancing as incorporating virtually all called or cued dances—including clogging, contra, and line dancing—and asserted that official designation would “enhance the cultural stature of Arkansas both nationally and internationally.”

Dale Evans, who was raised in Osceola (Mississippi County), died. She rose to fame as America’s “Queen of the West” (sometimes called “Queen of the Cowgirls”) alongside her fourth husband, Roy Rogers (“King of the Cowboys”). She starred in movies, television shows, and evangelical Christian programs. Evans wrote twenty-eight inspirational books and composed many songs, including the popular song of faith, “The Bible Tells Me So,” as well as the iconic American standard, “Happy Trails.”

Hugh Patterson was born in Cotton Plant, Mississippi. His family moved to Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) in 1917. Patterson was publisher of the Arkansas Gazette for thirty-eight years and is considered the unsung hero of the triumvirate that led the newspaper through the 1957 desegregation crisis at Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The paper’s coverage of the crisis won two Pulitzer Prizes.